jtfairbank

It's an unfortunate reality that we're going to exceed +1.5C, and we need to begin preparing for the consequences now. "Solving" climate change requires humanity to both prevent further warming AND take care of the people impacted by it. 10% of us could be forced to flee our homes by 2050...

In 2019 I founded Distribute Aid to develop community supply-chains that can support displaced people at scale. Since then, we've delivered $25M of aid between 100+ communities in 16+ countries. Given the size of the problem, and the need for rapid growth of successful solutions, we're taking a distributed approach that prioritizes local aid groups who are supporting displaced people. Everything is open-source of course!

If anyone wants to learn more / support us, please leave a comment or email me at taylor /at/ distributeaid.org. :)

We leverage partnerships with in-kind donors and shipping companies to get a lot of stuff for free. And of course there are tons of community groups gathering second-hand donations which we can send for free as well.

For example, there's a charitable factory making soap in Scotland. They give us a few hundred thousand bars of soap every 6 months or so, and we ship em out to 15+ refugee camps in Greece to ensure the hygiene of 100,000 people are met.

Our 2019 budget was $10,000...

I'm building supply chain & logistics tech at Distribute Aid. We help grassroots aid groups meet more needs, more consistently, and work together to gain efficiency at scale.

We deliver $100 worth of aid for every $1 we spend on operations. Literally a 100x return for humanity.

The need is there. The scale is there. But it'll never get VC funding for obvious reasons.

Did you read the article? Sounds like she didn't do anything wrong, but was sent falsified data by a more senior scientist that she trusted. After discovering that, she took steps to correct the record, alert other scientists that they need to double check their papers, and build automated tools to catch similar issues going forward. That sounds appropriate, and high in integrity, why should she be punished for doing the right thing?

They are big in the grassroots aid movement running important projects in multiple countries, but they aren't the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders big.

Hoping to get this resolved before they have to try and publicly call out Facebook, but you're right- that seems to be the only way to get tech orgs to take a minute to care about situations like these.

I was about to say, I've had no problems with PayPal after I moved to Serbia. Venmo on the other hand...

Have to agree. been really enjoying Elixir / Ecto / Phoenix.

I find Ecto lets me be as expressive as I need to with Queries, and handles the mapping into models very well for the 90% of easy cases that I need it to.

I have a "summer of code" project. I'm a founder of Distribute Aid [1], a Swedish ngo that builds tech tools for refugee aid groups. We're an open source project [2] and are looking for people who can contribute.

There are opportunities to join us on the ground in Europe, or to volunteer remotely. We try to take a people-first approach and will match volunteers up with tasks / projects that they are most interested in. It's a great fit for students looking to build their resume while making substantial contributions to an important project.

If anyone is interested in learning more, shoot me an email at taylor /at/ distributeaid.org

[1]: https://distributeaid.org

[2]: https://gitlab.com/users/distribute-aid/projects

Don't have links on hand, but it changes from country to country. We started ours in Sweden, where my cofounder is from. It was pretty easy compared to the 503(C) process in the US: create a governing document, put together a board, hold your first meeting, apply for organization status, apply for charity status.

Happy to talk more if you want- my email is in my profile.

As someone who cares more about adventure than $$$ and just founded my own NGO, mad respect.

2014: -$10k - Founded a startup.

2015: $35k - Moved to SV, raised a small seed.

2016: $54k - Running my startup in SV.

2017: $60k - Remote contracting from Scotland.

2018: $25k - Remote contracting. Founded an NGO in Europe, almost all of my contracting money goes to supporting my work with that.

2019: $20k - Remote contracting + full time on my NGO. Living in Serbia to stay close to the action.

How is that Capital As Power site radical at all when it merely purports to explore the dominant mode of capitalism / politics in the USA today?

Now if you linked to something like https://sub.media/ or https://itsgoingdown.org/ I'd understand...

Can you link a news article or study about the similarities between programmers at the end of the day and adults with ADHD? Just curious... for a friend... ;)

Shoot me a message. Email is in my profile.

Can US entrepreneurs go live in Gaza for a year to help mentor people in the local scene? Is that possible, and helpful?

I just sleep in my car in walmart parking lots. Saves money, and there's almost always a walmart within a reasonable distance.

I plan on spending the full day with the new hire or intern, and my goal is to go from 0 to a running build to a commit in day 1. Sure, it is kinda a hassle for me to block out the whole day, but that gets them past all of the poorly written docs and stupid install/setup bugs. They get excited instead of frustrated. The rest of the first week is exploratory- I ask them to make improvements to the docs based on their experience (get them up to date if they're behind), and also to share notes on larger improvements or ideas they have while they are still fresh. I aim for 1 commit a day in different parts of the codebase to give them some breadth. The second week I treat them like a normal team member to start building a regular flow, but give them a light week of work and block out ~1 hour a day for code reviews and Q&A.

Everything kinda sucks at startups, especially docs. The right way to do this is invest your time up front in order to save you and the new hire time in the long run.

Also, maybe they don't want to dive right in. Can you take the lead on the open source project for a small component and run that the way you want to for 3 months to show them how it could work? Maybe let each team naturally adopt the open source style if they want to, until a critical mass is hit?

One argument that may appeal to management is that your open source codebase becomes a powerful recruiting tool.

Many companies open source non-core code, like UI components designed for their domain or server widgets that can be pulled out into a standalone library. It's unlikely that your company will want to deal with the overhead of many outside contributors, unless it's an open source business model which it seems like it isn't. However, a couple of contributors here or there, or even better, someone who forks the codebase but doesn't cause extra work for you by submitting PRs, is a very strong signal that they'd make a good hire. They're interested, know some of the code already, like what you're working on, etc.

Since hiring is very expensive (costs 10k - 50k to make a single hire), this has real business value and you can use it to sway management.

https://ding.io/ was super nice when I was logging my time as a contractor. Worked great for personal stuff too, like going to the gym. Easy to separate that out from the work stuff.

Early stage startup founder here. I usually do a 30 day trial as a contractor for a candidate that I am confident about. This allows me to forgo the terrible interview practices a lot of places have, and focus on ironing out the kinks of working together. How it works:

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30 days only, more than that is too much risk for both of us. The potential hire wants to find a full time job, and we don't want to lose a good person to a competitor.

We pay ahead of time: 50% up front, and 50% halfway through. This helps build goodwill and show the potential hire that we are serious about full time employment.

In this case, either of us can walk away anytime if it is not a good fit. Regardless of who makes the call, the candidate keeps the total that we've paid so far. This allows candidates to be honest when it's not working out instead of pretending like everything is fine to get paid for their work during that time. That allows us both to move on instead of wasting time when it won't work.

As an alternative, candidates can choose to get paid after the fact based on how many days they worked. In this case, we pay 1.25 times their expected salary to compensate them for the risk. Either party can still walk away at any time.

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All of this is designed to build mutual trust, allow either party to walk away during the trial period, and show a potential hire that this really is just a trial period and we won't lead them on into further consulting.

readme.io - works well for non-api documentation too

Tried it, thought it was a pain in the ass. Depends on your team I guess.

readme.io - Turns out it works pretty well for non-api documentation too.

I totally agree! I have a number of trusted family members and advisors that have saved my bacon many times.

But I accept that I will make mistakes throughout my life. When I do, I think about them to figure out why I made the mistake and how I can avoid it next time. Then I let it go- beating myself up doesn't help. Honestly, if I'm going to make a mistake at some point, I'd prefer that it be sooner rather than later.

I'd say I had strong ethics to begin with, and these situations gave me a chance to test (and uphold) them.

Even doing this with unrelated parties inside the company is dangerous. The best thing to do is just CC your own lawyer. It's sad, but you potentially open yourself up to liability by warning your co-workers. If you do want to warn them, the best way would be through a quiet, short conversation in a private place away from the company. Possibly your lawyer's office.

Usually not a good idea. This opens you up to: defamation lawsuits, contract violations, and provides cause for firing which could hurt your own claims.

Scumbag Startup: "We fired Screwed Employee for cause."

Screwed Employee: "No you didn't! It was retaliation."

Scumbag Startup: "Sure we did. Look at what he/she posted publicly after leaving the company. Screwed Employee behaved similarly around the office and was negatively impacting the work environment."

Instead of getting into specifics, would simply listing them as "someone I would never work with again" suffice? If enough people do this then the specifics don't really matter... the warning sign is clear.

This seems to avoid the defamation issue because it is a personal statement (about yourself / your thoughts) instead of a statement about them. They could still sue you for defamation, but hopefully you could get it thrown out early at a low cost?

Agreed. Startups are incredibly hard, and this can bring out the best in people... or the worst.

Just like you, I'm early on in my career. I appreciate the incredibly valuable and lifelong lessons that I've learned from them. I feel that in the long run I'll be better off for them since I know exactly what to look for to identify bad situations before I'm in them, and how to protect myself if I do end up in one.

Most importantly, I've learned what not to do to other people and find that I've developed stronger ethics as a result.

You don't. Founding a company will be one of the hardest things either of you ever does. It's almost impossible to know beforehand how people will react to extreme stress, sleep deprivation, large amounts of money, etc...

You can certainly do your best to learn about each other and extrapolate what that means for a day to day working relationship, and for the good and bad times. I'd highly recommend working on a side-project together, or one of you hiring the other as a contractor for 1-3 months to work on the main product (pre-incorporation) with the understanding that everything will even out at incorporation. Equal (or reasonable) equity split, and the person paying the other for contracting work will get a reimbursement as part of the incorporation expenses.

To further reduce your risk, you absolutely need vesting and triggers. Based on my experience, the standard 4 year vesting / 1 year cliff is not enough for founders. I'd explore more long term options, such as 6 year vesting / 2 year cliff, or the 4/1 that only starts after reaching a significant revenue / fundraising milestone. The latter of 1 mil ARR or raising over 1 mil in funding. Obviously you should both have the same terms here.

You may also want to consider having only one of you on the board (so that in the worst case you can fire a cofounder). This should probably be the CEO. Also, CTOs are usually the first/only devs so you may want to consider setting a 6 month done-or-out milestone for product dev. This could be applied to other roles (CEO- fundraising, Sales- hitting early adopter/traction milestone), but I haven't seen that done in practice yet.

The worst case for you is that it doesn't work out in the early stages. This doesn't have to be a bad split, nor kill the startup. Sometimes people go in with good intentions, find out that it's not for them, and leave on good terms. But if they do leave, on good or bad terms, before the company is stable then you don't want them to take a large portion of the equity.

I strongly believe that founder equity is to compensate performance, not opportunity cost. That's why they need to have such a large portion- the risk of not performing is so great since the bar for a founder is so high, so if they do perform they need a large reward. If founders are concerned about opportunity costs of giving up a large salary, and need equity to make up for it, they probably aren't really ready to make the jump to a startup.

Great points all around! The reason I think small businesses are relevant is that the founders/owners own the entire business. They either lose money, break even, or make money. In the sucessful small business cases where they make money, since they own 100% their profit requirements for a good return are far lower than those of a startup. I'd guess it's still a power law scenario (just with less amplitude than startups).